Pride 2024 Queer Movie Recommendations (Part II)

There were not enough queer movies in the second half of June for my taste (are there ever, though?), but the ones I did see really blew me away. If you missed my first post of Pride Month movie recommendations, you can read that here. Now, without further ado…

New Releases

I Saw the TV Glow

Wowzers. Jane Schoenbrun is a fucking visionary. This movie is just… so… unique, captivating… an absolute mood. Gorgeous. A personal, multilayered metaphor for transness, but also a metaphor for anyone lost in the nostalgia of what once was, or could have been, instead of living their life the way they want to and are meant to. Jane Schoenbrun and I are almost exactly the same age, and it shows in the many 90s-kids-tv references liberally employed throughout the film – we have so many of the same points of reference, particularly to a time when kids’ television was, frankly, better and stranger and more challenging, more true, in a way that I doubt it ever will be again. The surreal references to The Adventures of Pete & Pete, in particular, unlocked some deep, unsettling childhood memories in me. Watch this alone in a dark room (preferably in your suburban childhood home), and let the unnerving nostalgia, the hazy melancholy, just wash over you.

Love Lies Bleeding

An absolutely wild metaphysical lesbian love story, complete with body builders and oodles of bloody murder. Set in 1980s rural New Mexico, amongst the dirt and sweat of those working out at “Crater Gym,” this darkly comedic (like, the darkest) thriller is gritty, tactile, and gay as hell. Whether it’s a sex scene with Kristen Stewart talking about stretching out her buff new girlfriend (played by the gorgeous Katy O’Brian) as sweat and juices run down their bodies and faces, a surreal moment of close-up body transformation, or a grimy, brain-busting murder scene, this movie will make you feel things. The cast is fantastic (including Jena Malone, Dave Franco, and a delightfully sleazy turn from Ed Harris), and I’m not sure I’ve ever loved a Kristen Stewart performance more. Not for the faint-hearted, but certainly for the rest of us.

Monkey Man

A brilliant action-revenge film—written, directed by, and starring Dev Patel—with more going on than initially meets the eye. This movie is so full of heart, much like its protagonist—known only as “Kid”—and Dev Patel brings so much to the performance. Likened to John Wick in some ways (the fight sequences are incredibly fast-paced and entertaining, even for someone like me who isn’t into most action movies), Patel’s protagonist is nonetheless much more of an underdog, slim and lanky, fueled by little more than his past trauma and a need for some sort of justice in an unjust world. It isn’t until Kid encounters an outcast community of trans folks, known as “hijras,” who help him harness his rage into something more controlled and measured, that he has a real fighting chance at fulfilling his mission. The trans community subplot is also a nod to the real conflicts happening around religion-based, politicized land-thieving occurring in India today.

Older Movies

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair

After watching I Saw the TV Glow, I had to revisit Schoenbrun’s previous film. This movie luminously inhabits the liminal, sparsely-occupied space that was the internet when it first began, when millennial kids were just beginning to explore its odd crevices and dark corners. A world where anonymity and alter egos were expected and accepted, a world full of mystery and a little danger. I miss that internet so much, especially in the face of today’s all-too-brightly-lit influencers and the requirement of performed “authenticity.” Being on the internet when it first began was, for some of us, a deeply personal, often lonely exploration, and this film captures it so, so well. Schoenbrun has also said the film is meant to evoke the feeling of what it’s like to be gender dysphoric, something I have never personally experienced. Nonetheless, I related to Casey’s feelings of loneliness and isolation, of feeling “off” or “wrong” in some way as a teen, and in finding a sort of rightness in some of the strange little universes of the weird internet.

If you’re interested, I also wrote a little poem about how World’s Fair and TV Glow made me feel. You can read it on my personal Instagram.

What are your favorite Pride Month movies (new or old)? Tell me in the comments!

Images from IMDB.com.